My Father
by SnowyRefuge
Summary: 'My mother tightened her grip around my waist. "Is there something the matter, Mordred?" I looked back up at her. "If you're not married to father, then did that mean he didn't want me?"' Mordred grows up without the love of his father. And thus comes the end to Camelot.
1. A King!

**This is heavily influenced by Nancy Springer's novels_ I Am Mordred_ and _I Am Morgan Le Fay_, because they were awesome, amazing books. I'm writing this is because I love the concept of Mordred in general, and I can't help but wonder what his/her life would have been like in the Fate/verse. Since I have yet to read Fate/Apocrypha, I've taken some liberties on how I imagine Mordred would act as a child. If anyone is unfamiliar with the legend of Mordred, then I recommend that you look it up or ask me, because it can be a bit confusing otherwise. **_**Especially**_** in the Fate/series version.**

**Note: I was actually _watching_ "King Arthur" while writing this! XD**

**Chapter 1**

**My Father, a King**

The story of my life is not an easy one to tell.

I was raised, nearly secluded in a castle made from magic, by my mother, whom I have always regarded as the highest caliber of mages. She was a beauty, with long, thick brown hair and lovely hazel eyes that could completely capture you with so much as one stare. Her lips, ruby red, were round and full, and she loved embroidering her hair with precious gems, weaving them in and out of her dark, silken locks with braids and golden threads.

She loved me very deeply, too, or so she told me. I had believed her, in this one thing that she said, day after day, night after night, so readily as a child, but I'm not so certain of it now. I think she loved me. I want to believe that more than anything else in this world, but the truth is that I can never truly know that, now that I know that she has always specialized in the art deception. That fine line between lies and truth that she had taught me was so definable as a child had broadened, just like my mind in the time of my teenage years, and become so vast that, by the time I knew what the differences between loving someone and using them was, I was standing directly in the middle of that thick, black line, and I wasn't sure which side I was standing closer to.

As I had said earlier, my mother's castle was made entirely from her magic. The trees and stream in our courtyard that she took me out to play in every day, the tall, strong walls which protected us while under enemy attack, the dining room, from which we ate together every morning and every night, and the armor and weapons with which I was trained with. Even the weather was carefully controlled to suit my needs, so that seasons were practically non-existent. If I wanted to play in the stream and chase fish, a glorious, blazing hot sun would push up from the clouds. If ever I felt the urge to play in the snow, those big, fat flakes of white would fall over my face and stick to my hair. And, on the occasions where I felt as if the world was crashing down around me, rain would pour forth from the heavens, as if the Lord, too, wept for me.

And I had been happy with these arrangements for what had seemed like the longest time. But then, when I was at the age of what most would judge to be ten, it had rained quite a lot, and I had become secretly pleased with myself every time something didn't go my way. An argument with one of the servants, scrapping my knees on a rock in the courtyard, falling in the stream and drenching myself. These were things in life that I couldn't control, no matter how much magic my mother used, and I adored them.

But they had never seemed to be enough.

I had begged my mother to please, please go a day without magic. Just one. That was all that I had ever asked of her; a single day where I wouldn't know what kind of weather we would have, or where I could step into a room without being redirected to wherever it was that she wanted me. Or to venture outside the castle.

"No," she had said. "It is too dangerous out there," she had said. "What if you get caught in the middle of a storm?"

It was the biggest disappointment of my life; I had wished so much that my mother would understand, that I could finally see life as the crazy, uncontrollable thing that all of the servants in the castle had spoken of. "But," she had said, catching my attention. "Wait another year, after your training is finished. Then, I swear to you, Mordred, that I will allow you to take a journey to Camelot and become a knight." She smiled at me gently, and touched my cheek with the tips of her long, slender fingers. "Then, you will be able to meet you father, at last."

She had never spoken to me of my father before, so I had become interested, very quickly, in this man that had supposedly taken part in the ritual of my birth. I had been overjoyed upon hearing that my father was none other than King Arthur, the legendary man that had risen from the streets into the castle of Camelot by pulling the sacred sword from the stone, and who held claim to the even more powerful, holy blade of Excalibur for himself.

That night, she had taken me into her room and pulled me into her lap while setting a silver-encased mirror in my hands. "Think really hard with your heart, Mordred," she had told me. "If you do that, then the mirror will know how much you long to see your father, and you will see him."

And so I did. I held that silver mirror as hard as I could between my pale, white fingers, and thought very hard from the depths of my mind, telling the mirror, "... I wish to see my father. I wish to see my father. I wish to see..." After a few minutes of sitting there, clutching that mirror, my mother tapped to the left side of my chest with her long, beautiful nails.

"With your _heart_, Mordred," she reminded me, "not your mind."

With this now in mind, I closed my eyes, emptying my head of those words, and tried to grasp the meaning of what my mother had said. With my heart? What was that supposed to mean, exactly?

"Reach for your heart with your _soul_," she whispered. "Then you may tell the mirror what you desire."

I could feel it then, the skipping of my heart, not much unlike a rabbit's. I reached for my heart with one hand, closed my eyes. That soft beating against my fingers was unlike any other I had felt before. It felt warm, safe, like something that I could grasp onto when I was in need. I could see the faint glow of a light against my eyelids then, so I opened them to see a swirling image before me.

A man, looking ever so familiar, standing hand-in-hand with a woman.

"That's him," I could hear my mother breath into my ear. "Oh, Mordred, you look so much like Arturia." I paid no mind to the name, but stared at the man in the image.

He looked a lot like me. There was that same long, golden hair that looked so soft and easy to run fingers through. Those large, green eyes, filled to the brim with cool, calm intellect that I could not help but admire. And, then, we had the same face. Round and delicate, with high cheek bones and a sharp jaw bone. Rather feminine, just like mine.

I took my fingers from my heart and pressed them to the face of the man in the mirror, my father. "He's so beautiful, mother," I whispered.

"Yes," she replied. "Yes, he is."

"Who's that woman with him?" I asked, now paying attention to the way my father held hands with that other woman. Although the act may have been supposed to look warm, it seemed chilling. He would not smile at the woman, but look over at her, uncomfortably, every once in a while, as they talked. Every now and then, he would smile heartwarmingly, but then it was gone in a flash.

"That is his wife, Guinevere," my mother answered.

"So you are not his wife?" I asked, my green eyes wide with curiosity.

"No," she answered. "I am his sister."

I looked up at her, wide-eyed. "Oh!" I could faintly see some similarities now. The softness of the hair, the way their eyes sparkled. I looked back down to the mirror. "Oh..."

My mother tightened her grip around my waist. "Is there something the matter, Mordred?"

I looked back up at her. "If you're not married to father, then did that mean he didn't want me? Does he love Guinevere more than he loves us?"

My mother had chuckled humorously. "Well, I'm certain that he like Guinevere more than he likes _me_. Although that isn't really saying much at all..." She looked back down at me and frowned. "But, look, Mordred, your father doesn't _really_ love that woman."

"He doesn't?"

"No," she said. "No he doesn't. You're father doesn't really love women."

I tilted my head to the side, confused. "But why would he marry a woman, then?"

"Because he is a king. He has to." She sighed. "This can be a very hard thing to explain, Mordred, but trust me when I say that you'll understand when you journey to Camelot and meet him, OK?"

I paused for a moment before saying anything. "Ok. But you never answered my first question."

"Well, what was that?"

"Does he love _me_?"

My mother smiled down at me then, looking sad and as though she didn't know what to say. "Well, you tell me what, Mordred." She took her hand and tapped the image of my father on the mirror. He was laughing now, probably at something that the woman had said. He looked very lovely while laughing. "You take a look at that face, and tell me. Do you think that he is the kind of man that wouldn't love his own son?"

"No." I placed my fingers back onto the cool glass of the mirror, taking in the beauty that belongs to none other than my father, King Arthur.

"I don't think he is, either," my mother told me, taking the mirror from my hands as the image began to fade, and change to the reflection of my own face. Ironically enough, there was hardly a difference. "Trust me, Mordred. You will become king, just like your father."

I nodded halfheartedly. "But, mother, can I come back and see him again tomorrow, after sword practice?"

My mother smiled down at me, a small, strained smile. "But of course, darling," She said, stroking the top of my head and pulling me close to her. "But of course..."


	2. My Dream

**Note: Mordred ages very quickly due to the fact that this is the Fate/universe, and things worked out different, since his dad's a girl. If you wanna find out the details, look it up or PM me, because I don't want to take up any more space here.**

**Chapter 2**

**My Father, my Dream**

A year had passed since that day, and my mother had kept her word that I would journey. That day, she had set me up with a weeks-worth of supplies, a suit of red and silver armor, and the best stallion that a boy could possibly ask for. His mane was soft and black, just as the rest of his body was, and his eyes were that of a dark storm, brewing and ready to strike at any given moment. He had the temper of a woman, but was as strong as a bull and was loyal enough to stay by my side. "A worthy companion," my mother had told me. "You better take care of that horse, Mordred; there's no other like him."

And so, with a few final good-byes, I rode off into the world which had been completely unknown to me as a child.

I learned what it was like to speak with people that were not acquainted to my mother when I stopped at a small village, I learned the danger of real battle when a wandering knight challenged me, I walked through the blast of a heavy, unwanted storm, and I became actually _hungry_, all for the first time in my entire life. It was a thrill beyond belief, talking with people that didn't have to constantly watch what they said around me, being able to feel the sting of a cut when a sword drew too close to my skin, not knowing where I would sleep or when I could eat next.

And, I had kept telling myself, the best had yet to come, for I was to finally meet my father! I still found the thought of my father, this man who had remained a complete enigma to me up until a year ago, stange and hard for me to wrap my mind around. There would be so much catching up to do! I wondered what he was like: Was he kind? Did he like to watch the stars at night, like me? Did he wonder about me nearly as much as I wondered about him?

... Did he even know I existed?

I quickly reprimanded myself for the thought. Of course he did! Mother had told me herself that she had sent him a letter, and that he was awaiting his son's return to Camelot at that very moment!

Still, I was giddy with anticipation at the chance to finally meet my father once I made it into the gates of Camelot. I had made good time, so I was a few days early and wouldn't be expected to meet my father for a while longer. I could wait, though. If there was one thing that my mother had taught me over that one grueling year, it was that patience was a virtue to pay mind to. It had gotten me this far, at the very least.

At the boarding house that I stayed at, it was filled with mostly men, all of which were much older than me, and a few children that stayed with their mothers. The boarding house had very few rooms, so I was forced to share a room with a small family comprised of a man (a baker, he told me) and his son.

I chatted with the baker quite a lot on that first day. He was curious about me, and what I had been doing with myself.

"Where do you come from?" He had asked me, trying to sound well-mannered and dignified.

"Down south, by the sea," I had told him. Yes, indeed, the first thing that I had seen upon exiting my mother's castle were deep, vast waters that rolled over hills of sand and cast a cool wind that protected me from the sun's intense heat. I had spent a whole day there, lingering under that big ball of fire, letting the sand and water seep between my toes and the wind brush my hair out of my face. _Pure bliss._

"Oh, very nice," The baker had said, nodding towards me. "And why have you come here? Surely you wouldn't come for no reason?"

"My father lives here," I told him. "I've never met him before in my entire life, so I wanted to come see what he's like." There was no use in telling him that my father was our very own King Arthur. Would he have even believed me? I highly doubted it.

And so he went on, questioning me about my travels. _Where have you been? What was it like in the mountains? Surely you didn't travel alone, did you? _All of them were trivial, something that you could ask anyone at any time. Still, it felt as if he was trying to get a little more out of me than he really was.

I could feel the son's eyes on me as I spoke. He was small, probably about five, and had golden hair that hung down around his head like a halo. He seemed to be paying little attention to anything else but me; he was just watching my face with his big blue eyes round in fascination. He seemed impressed when I had told his father that I had traveled all that way in a mere two weeks. "Impressive!" His father had bellowed. "It isn't every day that you meet a person that could cover that much ground in so little time!"

I smiled at him. "What can I say? My mother gave me a great horse."

After a while, the man excused himself from me, told his son to behave himself, and left the room. The boy stared at me with those wide eyes of his, and I gave him a quick smile to let him know he was fine before going to my bag and checking my supplies. I was to meet my father and be knighted in three days exactly, which meant that I had to be able to hold on with what little supplies I had left until then. I was fine, financially-wise, to pay for the rent of staying here for now, but I could have been a little tight on money for food, so I would have to be careful with that...

As I was going about doing this, the boy had walked over to me before bouncing on the edge of my beaten mattress and staring at me again.

I looked at him and raised an eyebrow. "Hello?"

The boy smiled at me, leaning over the mattress so that he was laying with his stomach on it, looking up at me. "You're a very beautiful lady," he told me.

I frowned, put off by the statement. "Thank you, but I'm a boy."

He tilted his head to the side, eyes wide. "You look like a woman."

"But I'm not."

The boy was silent now, looking up at me curiously. His irises were like waters, floating, swirling, and misting in the color of his eyes. I could see my reflection in his eyes, and, through them, I could see what he saw: a mirror image of King Arthur, but also the face of a distraught woman, denying accusations and claiming that she was a man. It was almost frightening, yet I could not look away from his eyes, almost mesmerized by the extent of my femininity.

"I like you, Sir," the boy, finally, told me. "I am Alexander. You?"

I stared at him a moment longer, and the sound of the door opening did not register in my mind. I opened my mouth and, very slowly, answered. "My name is Mordred,"

I only had a moment to notice the way the boy's eyes widened in recognition before there was a straggled cry from the door, and I turned just in time to see Alexander's father running towards us, face awash in fear and anger. I had not expected, when he reached us, for a fist to be thrown into my face, and I was sprawled on the floor a moment later while he grabbed his son and rushed back to the door. "Leave us alone, monster!" I heard him scream before the door was slammed shut and I was left sitting on the floor, prodding at a bruise that was beginning to form just under my eye.

They never came back, and no one else moved into my room. Hardly anyone at the boarding house even spoke to me after that incident, and I couldn't help but wonder: Had I done something wrong?


End file.
